If Alli and I are driving down Seneca Street for Italian, it’s always been to visit Chef’s. We’ve heard about DiTondo’s for a while but the main problem was their limited hours (dinner service only on Friday nights from what I understand). But on a Friday night when we couldn’t think of a place to go, we decided to finally try DiTondo’s and see if they could offer some type of unique spin on ‘red sauce Italian’.

The building’s interior (specifically their bar) is almost exactly what I thought it would be, dated in a way that felt nostalgic instead of sad. The bar (surprisingly) had a couple of local micro brews on tap and there appeared to be a collection of regulars having dinner. DiTondo’s has a pretty strong following and you could tell many of the diners ate there on a very regular basis and the waitress’ seemed to know everyone’s names.

Seabar is still primarily a sushi restaurant and while we went crazy on raw fish on our first visit, on this recent trip we decided to order some of their more elaborate/non traditional sushi rolls and try something from the kitchen. We ordered the Miso Caramel Crab Roll (above, $11) and their Lobster Roll ($14). Both were fantastic but for completely opposite reasons. The Lobster Roll had avocado, cucumber and large pieces of lobster in a soy wrap. The flavors in the roll were fresh, clean and light, I probably could have eaten two rolls myself. The Miso Caramel Crab Roll was a different but equally as good experience. This sushi roll is tempura fried and filled with crab, caramel, mushroom and cream cheese topped with a thick caramel sauce. Still warm and with a nice outer crunch from the tempura, the combination of salty caramel sauce and cream cheese was heaven. This is one of Alli’s favorite dishes and it isn’t hard to agree with her.

I don’t normally get that excited when Alli and I go to Italian restaurants, but since we started Buffalo Eats I’ve heard only good things about Marco’s Fine Italian Dining. I previously visited Marco’s Deli and loved the food, plus I knew chef Marco Sciortino had some serious chops after watching the Nickel City Chef XII Recap. The restaurant isn’t in the prettiest of places, located on Niagara Street near the Rich Products plant in the West Side, but that definitely doesn’t detour their customers. In the grass “parking lot” across the street we found plenty of luxury cars and inside was a busy crowd on a Friday evening.